


our names could be eternal (unlike our dreams)

by Elisye



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, also despite these pairing tags - saiouma is the main one and it painfully shows, hanahaki disease au, rip these chara tags a bit, uhhhh KIND OF hanahaki?? sorta?? uhHH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:32:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisye/pseuds/Elisye
Summary: [ NDRV3 SPOILERS PRESENT ]The most important things lie behind your eyelids - and so, are lost and found much too late to be helped.





	our names could be eternal (unlike our dreams)

**Author's Note:**

> hi im elisye and idk what the heck i just wrote but i Wrote It

And so, this silence kills.

You stare at the blank walls, waiting for the shadows to tilt into dawn. Faraway, machines murmur, lights flicker. You don't think much beyond that - just blinking to each turquoise spike of the electrographs, wondering and wondering and wondering. After all, this scene is—

You close your eyes, and breathe.

Roses will bloom to winter and spring, no matter what.

 

 

 

You climb above the rubble, pulling Yumeno along with a helping hand.

The sun is fake and the moon is bare, on the dome's exterior. You find yourself with a frown, wondering if illusions are stronger than reality, and hear Harukawa snapping at you to keep moving. This gigantic play-field still needs to be scaled across, still needs to be left behind. Ignore the beeping red lights and the distant rumble of something and nothing and everything being shouted out - the cameras can stay on forever, if they're still so desperate. Even so, the three of you will not stay.

You take one deep breath, glancing back. There are still corpses there. Will the production crew take care of those, as they've done for everyone else? There's a bitter smile as you figure, perhaps and perhaps not - because even if they tried to, they'll still be missing one. He's nothing but blood and guts locked in a machine's catbox, after all.

"Saihara." Harukawa calls, and Yumeno points at a long, thick rope made from makeshift substitutes. You're asked to help with tying the knots - which you do, slowly but then deftly, as you ignore the knot building in your throat.

 

 

 

"Ah, do you want to see a new spell I learnt? Maki and I practiced a lot on it—!"

The woman in question bristles a bit, flustered, muttering something about she had little else to do and little else to use her hands for - there's still the curve of a small smile on both hers and your face, even as she comments about how blood and knives can still be useful to someone, kindly so, as cheap tricks.

Yumeno huffs under the brim of her sunhat. "Hey, hey, you're my assistant, Maki! Don't say our magic is cheap now."

"I can only do low-tier spells though." She replies with a shrug.

"Even if they're only the basics, magic is always magic - and it's important to love it all the same."

"Yes, yes," comes the obviously sarcastic response, but not in rudeness. The smile is still faint, but what matters is that it's still there. Harukawa looks at her open palm, clenching, unclenchng, her eyes briefly lost in smoking rubble and a grand finale from years ago. "You've said it so much that I can never forget that part about magic now."

You tilt your head in some curiosity, unable to help yourself, "What part?"

"What I just said." The redhead hums, softening - "The first step to being a good mage is to have love."

"...As Himiko says." Harukawa stops leaning against the blanched-out walls, taking quiet steps to the end of your bed. "Magic happens if you have love. It turns everything in the world, apparently."

"Not apparently - it does!" Her softness only softens more - into stars, into sadness, recognizable in its shape and color. Her hands come clasped over her heart, simply, then tightly. "Love is a powerful magic of its own. I know that, and the two of you also know that. Perhaps, more than anyone else - we know what fortunes and misfortunes such magic can bring us."

Red eyes flicker over you for a moment. The beep of the machines is louder than usual.

The rose continues to unfurl.

 

 

 

The sun sets, the sun rises, the sun disappears.

The three of you hop from city to city, trying to fade away with the turn of the days. It's not that easy - the world outside is beautiful and true, as perfectly alive as plastic, and there are more than enough rallies and crowds talking about nothing but a reality that you'd like to tear away from.

So it takes more than a few days, weeks, months - until the three of you find a lazy town where the sea is painted white from all its sunshine, and the sky has a distinct shade of pink at the right times. A place so quiet, so quaintly ignorant, it's almost dreamlike. And though dreams, as all of you know, will never last—even so, the three of you settle here, at least for more than just a few nights, hoping to find a sense of foundation before needing to be uprooted from the world again.

You take to managing the little house - a shack if you had to be honest - while Yumeno and Harukawa go out to make ends meet. Maybe surprisingly, not too unsurprisingly, both of them are hired as part-time assistants at a local nursery. The news is easily broken over a bowl of rice and egg, with Harukawa scowling lightly over how her given talent is supposed to be _assassination, seriously now,_  while Yumeno makes a cheeky remark or two on the thought that her lie about being a child caretaker was never really meant to be a lie after all. You laugh quietly to the banter, push aside an impulsive thought of black and white and grey, vividly checkered, before asking if one of them can pass the pepper.

 

 

 

Death keeps waiting.

Momota stares ahead, one step away from facing the inevitable, before he suddenly pulls back, turns around. Anyone would wonder if he got cold feet, because who wouldn't? But it's not from fear - no, his face is still determined, too determined. Harukawa chews on her bottom lip, lets it tear a bit, but not quite bleed.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing!" Monokuma whines in the background. "You got an execution to meet! Stop wasting our time and—"

"God, do you ever fucking shut up?" The astronaut coughs loudly into his hand, and painfully keeps walking away. You can't help but look away for a moment - and you want to keep looking away, actually, if it weren't for the sudden clasp of his other hand on your shoulder, which you flinch at, half-expecting red smeared over the black fabric. "I'll... I'll go, don't worry. But before that - I got something to do. Something I wasn't sure of, but..."

He swallows, and you watch the apple bob like a solid clump of blood and discomfort being roughly shoved down, to buy time. "There's something I gotta give you. From Ouma, kind of."

"Huh...?"

In no time at all, Momota presses something into your hand, soft and damp. He keeps your hand tight around it, letting you observe only streaks of red and pink on your nails, and you blindly, wildly wonder if he donated half a heart. Just like that, however, the opportunity is over - and Harukawa's yells are lost to Momota in a void of space.

 

 

 

There's a small cafe some blocks away, tucked into the street corner. That leaves it popular only to old-time residents, the nearby, and the odd. You're not sure which of those categories fit any of you, but you suppose maybe the last of them.

You enjoy the cafe for its ambiance, the low-hanging lights and the warm aroma of fresh bread, perfectly tailored for reading books. Yumeno enjoys it for its menu, specifically the milk tea, which she never fails to order unless she's curious about something new and untried. Harukawa enjoys it for the quiet, for the lack of people to give looks of surprise or fear or delight - the utter absence of recognition is one that all three of you can easily appreciate.

That's why, in hindsight, it became routine for all of you to visit the cafe on weekend mornings - where you shake sleep from your shoulders, listening to the gibberish mumble of news and chatter, as Yumeno gobbles up a buttered croissant and Harukawa simply just relaxes to the slow, beloved tune of normality.

_"And now for today's morning news—"_

_"—protest in front of the Tokyo Supreme Courts, established since yesterday afternoon—"_

_"—several incidents of violence on record, despite attempts by local police to maintain peace—"_

_"—the company faces mounting pressure to fold to escalating discourse over various media, and are estimated to gain a massive net loss of—"_

_"—case will likely have no end, as the three remaining participants or 'survivors' of the former popular reality show, Danganronpa, have yet to be located—"_

Yumeno jerks a little in her seat, her head snapping to Harukawa. The girl, in particular, has one wide eye set firmly on the screen on the wall. You see a glint of something shining just below the table's edge. There's little logic to any of this, only instinct, and the two of you grab onto the assassin's wrist - one each, for comfort or for safety, who knew now.

Harukawa keeps her gaze pinned to the TV, before eventually, a bit shakily, sighing. She twirls the knife in her hand, and easily hands it to Yumeno - who gingerly places it back on the table, frowning all the while at her half-finished croissant. Even if the warm quiet of the cafe hasn't really been disturbed, even so, it isn't hard to see how the weekend has already been completely ruined with this mood.

You turn to watch a nearby elderly couple playing a game of shogi, expecting something else for a split-second, before distracting yourself further by going to pay the bill in advance.

 

 

 

"Do you believe in it?"

Her question is so small, you almost don't hear it. You press flat another fold of paper, white on one side, red on the other side.

"This isn't a very powerful spell, but even so..." Yumeno mumbles as she finishes her crane, and sets it on the side table, almost displacing another white bird from its corner spot. You don't pause at that, and continue to fold. "Miracles can still happen. And miracles are a fragment of the arcane realms. Even if you... give up... maybe—"

"I haven't given up."

You finish the crane. It's a bit lopsided, since you only just started learning to make these. On the other side of the bed, Harukawa passes a new sheet of paper - this time, glossy purple on one side, and plain white on the other.

"Ouma would laugh at that," Harukawa says, flatly, and the three of you continue to make three vain, hopeful miracles.

 

 

 

Despite it all, you find a newspaper that's a bit more aware of things outside of town.

Despite it all, you read it, follow it, and keep your eyes peeled for what's worthwhile.

(They already know what you're doing, what you're looking for. Eyes are the windows of the soul. They can see into you as easily as you can see flowery pinwheels in Yumeno's eyes and violet-burning celestials in Harukawa's eyes.)

Months and months and months of such - and finally, there's a small article on the organization of several funerals, their dates and their locations already planned, tasteless print of compensation and apologies that will never make do in your frankest opinion. But the dubious sincerity aside, you find yourself marking a few of the lines, already keenly planning out the trip to those cities, and of course—no one stops you. Two join you.

 

 

 

As Kiibo fights the Existals, as you try to grasp the truth for once and for all - even with a time limit that seems to physically weigh on you, you find your steps faltering now and then, hands slipping into your pockets.

What Momota left you - you can't help but take it out, stare at it, at times idly wonder for the blood stains it keeps leaving. There's a sort of a macabre beauty to the fact that it still bleeds, as if alive, even though it isn't and it's obvious that it's deader than dead. Thankfully, you are not so sentimental as to assume that it's a figment of its owner spared from dying, in a fancifully roundabout sense. You wouldn't be a good detective if you created such delusions, so far from what's in front of you.

Another explosion shakes the building. You take a shaky breath and curl closed your fingers. A part of you burns this to memory, the feeling of withered roots and bloody petals, crumpled gently in your hand. Of a love that died in vain for everyone's sake.

(So the real blackened was—)

You keep moving.

 

 

 

Even though you planned to attend only a few of the funerals, to minimize the risk of being discovered - somehow, you find yourself at all of them, barring the ones being held in absentia.

Well, even of the ones being held in absentia, from the lack of a body or any such remains to work with - there's one that you attend, absolutely, absolutely, if only because carnations can catch fire and the one in your trouser pocket seems to constantly burn holes into your skin.

For Ouma's funeral, there's only a small collection of people - a group of friends, you think, wearing or clutching clown masks. It's far too easy to think back to the motive video, but something about making a connection there seems wrong, so you simply listen to the chant of the priest in front as rain pours muffled outside. Harukawa busies herself with tucking back an annoying lock of hair that doesn't want to stay hidden in her oversized hoodie, and Yumeno hides right behind her, unable to say anything as much as you.

What could you possibly say, anyway? Sorry for not realising things sooner? Sorry for being your killer, in a sense?

Snippets of a game of knives come to mind. You really are something of an idiot, aren't you?

Your hand wanders into your pocket, tries to crush the flower. You can't, never will, in the end, because this is something you absolutely must carry, in some form. Apologies cannot relieve nor even fathom guilt. So this one-sided love has to remain, somehow.

(Perhaps that is why karma takes pity on you - and on returning home, you start to choke on roots, and collapse.)

 

 

 

As usual, this silence kills.

You know this won't last forever. You can't tell what you're waiting for anymore.

You let the years pass. The rose loves you. You let it love you, so dearly, so wonderfully, it'll kill you eventually. This doesn't seem like love in the least, not like the one Chabashira left for Yumeno, not like the one Harukawa held for Momota. But this is love nonetheless - a different kind, so far from being love that it loops back into being so. That sort of twisted, nonsensical thinking can still make you chuckle on a better day.

Of course, you did wonder - if you gave up on it. Surgery exists. And if you will yourself to forget, to give up, then that too can kill the rose. But this is your responsibility, and if there's one thing you've learnt over and over from being in a killing show, is that things simply have to follow through, one way or another.

So you will keep this flower, and let it bloom far too late to be helped.

It feels only right to do so.

 


End file.
